Everyone told her that Yan Qiongyu was a gentle, virtuous, and tenderly tempered beautiful man, the standard Omega template of the Thorn Empire.

Now it seemed that was nothing but false advertising.

Blocked into the washroom, Wang Luan replayed what had just happened in her mind, and only now did she barely come back to her senses.

She saw the joint connector strip from a mecha model that Yan Qiongyu had used earlier to bind her wrist, and realized that might have been his “consideration,” so as not to touch her.

Though the scene at the time had looked quite bad.

Sitting down on a rest bench nearby, Wang Luan looked up and asked, “What do you want to say?”

To discuss with her not letting this matter slip out, or to continue next time with openly repairing the planks while secretly crossing the river?

Yan Qiongyu suddenly said something astonishing: “Actually, I once suspected that you weren’t the original Miss Wang Luan.”

Wang Luan’s back, which had just leaned against the smooth wall, instantly straightened.

It was laughable—this statement hadn’t come from this body’s father, nor from the maids and butlers who interacted with her the most, but from Yan Qiongyu, a person who had only met her three times in total.

Even the slightest reaction Wang Luan showed would be caught by Yan Qiongyu, let alone such an obvious one—it was already enough for him to confirm some of his conjectures.

“Of course, I don’t care whether you are or not, as long as the Wang family thinks you are.”

“Miss Wang Luan and I share the same ideas on certain matters. We can help each other.”

“Mm, okay.” Wang Luan nodded.

Yan Qiongyu closed his mouth and smiled. A bellyful of coaxing and deceptive words never even made it out before being blocked back by Wang Luan; all the time he had originally planned to use to persuade her cooperation was rendered unnecessary, resulting in an unplanned silence.

Soon, Yan Qiongyu smiled and said, “Miss Wang Luan really trusts me.”

“Because it won’t get worse,” Wang Luan replied bluntly.

There were still twenty minutes left. The two people, who were actually not very familiar with each other, just stared at one another in silence for quite a while.

Yan Qiongyu suddenly shifted the topic and brought up something else: “Does Miss Wang Luan know why the Wang family head wants to find someone else to bear children for you, instead of finding someone to have children himself?”

His tone was mysterious, as if he knew some inside story. Seeing Wang Luan shake her head, he leaned against the sink and began chatting with her casually.

“The Wang family head—he’s found quite a few Omegas outside to bear him children. Most nobles do this, so it doesn’t sound unusual. Of course, he also has a few illegitimate children, but his luck wasn’t good—every one born was an Omega or a Beta.”

“A few years ago, one of his mistresses finally managed to give birth to an Alpha for him. Unfortunately, the aptitude was too poor, the rank too low, and the body weak as well—didn’t even live to three years old before dying.”

“In the past two years, there hasn’t been any news of him producing more illegitimate children. He’s probably finally given up.”

Was gossip about the Wang family head really something everyone knew? Wang Luan listened in a daze.

Why was it that in the original body’s memories, there was no mention at all of the Wang family head’s illegitimate children? She had stayed in the Wang family for so many years, yet she knew less than an outsider?

Yan Qiongyu glanced at her and continued, “The Wang family head probably has some kind of genetic defect, which is why he’s never been able to produce a child with good aptitude. Miss Wang Luan’s C rank is likely also because the Wang family head’s inherited genes developed aftereffects…”

“The Wang family head wasn’t originally S rank. In order to compete for the position of family head, he forcibly raised his rank with drugs. Raising one’s rank is no easy matter, one misstep and the genes collapse. From this perspective, the fact that the Wang family head today merely can’t produce children with good aptitude is actually extremely fortunate.”

But this unlucky Miss Wang of the Wang family was not so fortunate.

If what came before could still be considered rumors and gossip, then what followed was definitely a secret that ordinary people could not possibly know.

Yan Qiongyu knew all this and could still tell her so casually—this person was definitely not simple.

Could he be a spy? An agent? Someone who dealt in intelligence?

While speaking, Yan Qiongyu had been closely observing Wang Luan’s expression. She appeared completely unaware of this information, like a strange person who had suddenly intruded into this world, every reaction and behavior utterly out of sync with her surroundings.

She didn’t seem to care about the Wang family head’s affairs, nor did she know the Wang family as well as he had imagined.

He said she was not Wang Luan, but in reality, no one could silently replace the Wang family’s daughter. After pondering for a long time, he could only arrive at one conclusion: she was Wang Luan, and yet not Wang Luan—something inexplicable must have happened to her.

In order to achieve his own goals, he could not casually settle on a marriage contract. Choosing Wang Luan was the result of careful consideration.

However, the originally stable candidate had suddenly developed a variable, forcing him to spend more time on this tool-like fiancée of his.

He observed and tested her again and again, and could only come to a harmless conclusion. Even so, he inevitably still harbored a trace of doubt.

He could disguise himself, so couldn’t others do the same?

“Miss Wang Luan, to the Wang family head right now, you are very important,” Yan Qiongyu hinted to her. “You can completely go and verify whether these matters are true.”

The Wang family head’s genetic defect was a reasonable inference he had made based on known conditions; he also wanted to know whether his guess was correct.

Wang Luan felt that Yan Qiongyu bringing these things up with her on his own initiative might be an attempt to draw closer to her, to become friends or something like that.

She had been withdrawn for several days now. Since someone wanted to communicate with her amicably—and they had just helped each other earlier—it wouldn’t be right for her not to respond, so she asked, “How do you know all this?”

How could someone just come out and ask a question like this, one that couldn’t be answered? Yan Qiongyu, who had earned full marks in Language Arts, smiled without speaking. He had grown somewhat accustomed to situations where she didn’t act according to his expectations.

He could only say, “Why I know these things is a secret… just like Miss Wang Luan, you also have secrets you can’t talk about.”

“We both know the other has secrets now. That makes it very fair, doesn’t it?”

Yan Qiongyu expressed his sincerity in a roundabout way.

They both had secrets, and they both knew the other had secrets, so she should trust him a bit more, let down her guard, expose more tells in front of him, so that he could see the clues and infer exactly what value she might bring him.

Wang Luan didn’t understand the implication behind his words. Seeing him staring at her the whole time, she nodded in confusion.

Yan Qiongyu thought to himself: if she was pretending, then he had truly met a formidable opponent. Not to be underestimated.

Wang Luan was thinking that it must be close to thirty minutes by now; time felt unbearably long in here.

Yan Qiongyu seemed to be calculating the time as well. He stood up from beside the sink, straightened his collar, and walked toward the door. He paused at the doorway. “Oh, right, Miss Wang Luan, you should be able to take it easy for a while now.”

It wasn’t until the next day that Wang Luan understood what Yan Qiongyu had meant by that sentence before leaving.

Yan Qiongyu had been admitted to the hospital last night due to a pheromone rejection reaction. For the next week, she wouldn’t need to have any contact with him, because he needed to recuperate properly in the hospital.

Although thinking this way felt rather unfair to him, she was finally able to catch her breath. He really was a good teammate who sacrificed himself to benefit others. As a result, Wang Luan rarely took the initiative to ask the butler about him. “Yan Qiongyu doesn’t have any serious problems, right?”

The butler had seen her previous rejection and might have assumed she disliked Yan Qiongyu very much, so he was somewhat surprised that she asked about him on her own initiative. He replied, “There’s no problem. It’s just that it was his first time coming into contact with Miss Luan’s pheromones, so his body had some rejection reaction. Once he gets used to it, it’ll be fine.”

He felt a bit relieved, thinking that things were developing in a positive direction.

Before Yan Qiongyu left last night, he had already had someone test Yan Qiongyu’s condition and confirmed that the two had carried out an initial marking. Although the situation at the time hadn’t been recorded by the surveillance cameras installed inside the room, the result the family head wanted was already there, so no one really cared about that.

What they needed to worry about now was the degree of Yan Qiongyu’s rejection to Wang Luan’s pheromones.

According to the doctor’s report, Yan Qiongyu’s rejection level was moderate, which wasn’t too bad.

At this level, as long as they proceeded slowly with auxiliary medication, the marking would eventually be successfully completed—it was just that Yan Qiongyu would have to suffer a bit more, and that was something they didn’t care about.

“Is Miss Luan going to visit Young Master Yan Qiongyu?”

“No!” Wang Luan refused decisively.

She wasn’t as perceptive as Yan Qiongyu, nor was she as tactful, but she at least knew that disturbing someone’s rest was inviting divine retribution. They weren’t close either—if she went over, both of them would be forced to put on a show. How was anyone supposed to rest like that?

The next few days were the most relaxed Wang Luan had experienced since transmigrating. She stayed holed up in the studio of her dormitory, sealed away all of the original body’s mecha models, and tried making a brand-new mecha model on her own. She even felt that she could understand the construction of combat mecha.

She used her smart brain for immersive holographic shopping, buying many things she was curious about from online malls, spending most of her time familiarizing herself with this world and digesting the memories left to her by the original body.

In this world, she had no friends. No one asked her out to play. She didn’t have parents or an older sister who would care whether she ate well each day or went to bed early.

During school hours, everything was calm and uneventful. The butler had probably smoothed things over—no one bullied her, and no one paid attention to her either. But that oppressive feeling of an impending storm never dispersed. Like dark clouds, it slowly gathered over her head, brewing a rainstorm that would come sooner or later.

Her brief respite still came to an end. That morning, a maid informed her that the butler would come to pick her up in the afternoon to go to the hospital to visit Yan Qiongyu, and at the same time require her to undergo the second marking.

She also unexpectedly received a message from Yan Qiongyu.

“When you come, please bring me a bouquet of fresh flowers. Thank you.”

In Wang Luan’s hometown, visiting the sick meant bringing some flowers or fruit, but there was no such custom here.

When the butler came to pick her up, he heard her make a request: “Let’s go to the mall first to buy some things.”

In the end, she arrived at the hospital carrying a bouquet of pale pink gladiolus and a large bag of fruit. The Wang family had a private hospital, but at Yan Qiongyu’s request, they went to White Oak Hospital.

This was the largest Omega-exclusive hospital. Given that it housed the most renowned doctors in Omega pheromone research, Yan Qiongyu’s request had been approved.

For this entire week, he had been receiving treatment at White Oak Hospital.

Wang Luan walked into the spacious, fresh-toned private ward and saw Yan Qiongyu wearing a light blue hospital gown, leaning back against the bed. His complexion was much paler than the last time she had seen him.

Pale, frail, and pitiable.

“You’re here.” He looked at her and smiled, seeming very happy about her arrival, as if he had already been waiting for a long time.